"As I write this, I’m alone in my house with my four year-old son and my 10-month-old daughter. My daughter has caught some virus that seems to be generating a really terrifying rash on 90% of her body. My lovely paediatrician, who I’ve now seen three times in the last 10 days, isn’t concerned, but she doesn’t have to wake up every 90 minutes to comfort an inconsolable infant. And my son has been waking up nightly as well. He wanders into my room at two or three in the morning, looking for his father. Who isn’t here. Because we’re getting a divorce."

I urge you to read the entire thing if you haven't yet. It's so honest and raw. It's not the piece we expected to receive, but it's actually a million times more valuable because it's a poignant insight into the reality of having a very successful career, and very small children and a fragile relationship - something's got to give.

The reason so many of us read it and connected with it (35, 000 page views and counting) is because it once again busts the myth of 'having it all' and it painfully highlights the disparity between a woman and a man's lifestyle choices (as Treem says "I don’t think I wanted anything different than a 35-year-old man in my position would expect from his life. Two children, a happy marriage and a white-hot career? Is that such a crazy thing to strive for?").

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It also proves that no matter how perfect things may appear from on the surface (a Golden Globe and working with Dominic West on a daily basis), there's a different story on the inside. It speaks to us so fundamentally because every one of us has retreated to the shower to cry at some point in our lives - when juggling relationship/family/career has just become too much, or too impossible.

I actually take pleasure from looking at other people's 'perfect worlds' - stylish women/cute kids/beautiful homes. I enjoy scrolling through those images, the same way I enjoy flicking through a magazine - it's a chance to forget I'm on a sweaty commute to the office, a moment (or half an hour) of escapism.

But their pictures - just like my own - are not the reality. They are a little bit of reality. Then there's everything else you don't really share, because it's just not that pretty.

There's the big stuff. For me it's constant money worries, because my family of four is surviving on just my salary (we live the last week of every month on pasta and omelettes), the weight of responsibility and uncertainty (because the world of print media is rocky and in constant flux, yet this is the only thing I know how to do...), relationship tensions (are Jaron and I happy with our respective roles? With each other? Can we navigate the power imbalance? Where will we be in five years? Where do we want to be?).

And it's also the little things: life with small children (the constant stream of demands, the constant worry, the tantrums, the picky eating and sleepless nights), it's my untidiness and his grumpiness - which neither of us seem to be able to get a grip on. It's never having enough time to get all the jobs you need to do, done, let alone to have time for yourself.

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I know I am extremely lucky. I have a job and a family I adore. I am healthy and happy. Yet I can also find myself slipping down the rabbit hole and looking at other people's lives and believing they have it even better - they are more successful, seem more serene, more sorted. Sarah Treem's piece is a honest and eloquent reminder that we shouldn't believe everything we see from the outside and that we should be kinder to ourselves on the inside. Good is good enough. There is no such thing as perfect.

Good Things This Week

The hot ticket last week was the Caramel summer party and fashion show. Hosted in a leafy Kensington Square, myriad chic mothers in luxe maxi sundresses (like this one, which I have been obsessed with ever since), and their equally well-dressed offspring ate popcorn, tried their luck at the coconut shy and took pony rides, before sitting down to watch the prettiest fashion show (which was held on a rattan catwalk, with ribbons rippling in the breeze, I'm mean, could it be more idyllic?!).

Just like those Instagram pics, I found it all madly inspiring, but the excitable toddlers who careered down the catwalk, high on sugar, after the show had finished were a blissful reminder that even the fashion world has to keep it real sometimes. caramel-shop.co.uk

More Good Things!

Oh my! How I have fallen for this brand new accessories label Mimi and Lula. For some reason, trinkets, hair clips and kitschy little cross body bags trigger something in my brain and I become a six year-old girl again and want everything.

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